The Wong Kar-Wai Collection [5 Discs]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Box set includes Happy Together, Fallen Angels, As Tears Go By, Chungking Express, Days Of Being Wild.

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 5
• Subtitle: Eng
• Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (Theatre Wide Screen)
• Features:
  • cc
  • [None specified]

AWARDS

• Cannes Film Festival

•     Won Best Director - 1997 (Wong Kar-Wai)

• Hong Kong Film Awards

•     Won Best Picture - 1993
•     Won Best Picture - 1989
•     Nominated Best Picture - 1997
•     Nominated Best Picture - 1994
•     Nominated Best Picture - 1987

• Independent Spirit Awards

•     Nominated Best Foreign Film - 1997 (Wong Kar-Wai)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Leslie Cheung - Yuddy
       Andy Lau - Ah Wah
       Leslie Cheung - Ho Po-wing
       Brigitte Lin - Woman in blonde wig
       Leon Lai - Wong Chi-Ming
       Tony Leung Chiu - Wai - Cop 663
       Michelle Reis - Agent/Killer's boss
       Jacky Cheung - Fly
       Tony Leung Chiu - Wai - Lai Yiu-fai
       Maggie Cheung - Su Lizhen
       Maggie Cheung - Ah Ngor
       Chang Chen - Chang
       Takeshi Kaneshiro - He Zhiwu
       Andy Lau - Tide
       Faye Wong - Faye
       Takeshi Kaneshiro - He Quiwu, Cop 223
       Charlie Yeung - Cherry
       Karen Mok - Blondie
       Valerie Chow - Air Hostess
       Kong To - Hoi - Ah-Hoi
       Man Chi Leung - Tony
       Wu Yuk - Ho - Man Forced to Have His Clothes Washed
       Tony Leung Chiu - Wai
       Chen Wan - lei - He Zhiwu's Father
       Jacky Cheung
       Ronald Wong Ban - Ah Site
       Toru Saito - Sato
       Rebecca Pan
       Chan Fai - hung - Man Forced to Eat Ice-Cream
       Kwan Lee - Na - Woman Pressed to Buy Vegetables
       Carina Lau

• Director:

  Wong Kar-Wai

• Producer:

  Wong Kar-Wai, Chang Ye-cheng, Chen Yi-cheng, Chan Pui-Wah, Chan Yi-Kan, Rover Tang, Alan Tang Kwong-Wing

• Screenwriter:

  Wong Kar-Wai

• Cinematographer:

  Christopher Doyle, Andrew Lau

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Danny Chung

• Composer (Music Score):

  Frankie Chan, Roel A. Garcia

• Editor:

  William Chang, Wong Ming-lam, Wong Ming Lam, Hai Kit-Wai, Kwong Chi-Leung, Patrick Tam

• Production Designer:

  William Chang

• Art Director:

  William Chang, Chung Deng Yat

• Executive Producer:

  Wong Kar-Wai, Alan Tang

• Costume Designer:

  William Chang

• Sound/Sound Designer:

  Leung Chi-Tat, Tu Duu-chih

• First Assistant Director:

  Johnny Kong

• Stunts:

  Poon Kin-kwun

• Production Supervisor:

  Jacky Pang

• Action Director:

  Stephen Tung Wei, Poon Kin-Kwan, Benz Kong To-Hoi

REVIEWS:

• At a time when Hong Kong cinema was known more for its pyrotechnics and jaw-dropping feats of physical daring than for sensitive explorations of the human condition, Chungking Express was a revelation to both domestic and international audiences. The film swept the 1995 Hong Kong Film Academy awards and established director Wong Kar-wai as one of world cinema's most adventurous and influential filmmakers. Ironically, Chungking Express was made on a whim when Wong had a three-month break from his famously troubled production of Ashes of Time (1994). In contrast to the somber, weighty tone of that film, Wong wanted to make a film that was light, funny, and even whimsical. Writing the script during the day while shooting at night, he allowed himself to abandon the rigid confines of conventional narrative for a looser, more thematic structure. Consisting of two similar but unrelated stories, the film details the lonely lives of four of Hong Kong's most isolated, disconnected inhabitants as they cross paths. The characters' sole commonality is Hong Kong's urban landscape, which swoons with neon-lit melancholy thanks to Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle's eye-popping camerawork. The result is a film infused with the melancholy of random, fleeting urban encounters as it also crackles with a rare vitality, reflecting both the conflicting emotions of city life in general and the bustle and uncertainty of Hong Kong in the anxious years leading up to its 1997 handover to China. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi
• Swathed in neon and attitude, Wong Kar-wai's Fallen Angels is arguably the apotheosis of the Hong Kong auteur's hyper-kinetic, pop-informed style. Picking up on the stylistic flourishes and thematic preoccupations of Wong's previous feature, Chungking Express, this nocturnal movie follows a handful of restless, lonesome strangers in millennial Hong Kong. The movie, shot mainly in wide angle by long-time Wong collaborator Christopher Doyle, is a lush reverie: Wong's characters drift through the movie in various states of ruminative alienation and ennui. Despite this obsession with urban anomie, Wong's penchant for loopy coincidences and distracted doodling keeps things bittersweet rather than depressing. Dripping in romantic excess, the movie offers a fractured, wistful snapshot of fleeting youth, with MTV pyrotechnics, stylish languor, and slapdash absurdity all rolled into one cool and cohesive package. As in Wong's other features, mood and atmosphere are everything. From the smear of lights on busy city streets to the glamorously stoical disaffection of its characters, Fallen Angels never fails to be anything less than gorgeous and hip. For all its attitude, this elegiac film never lapses into winking irony, a tribute to Wong's singular capacity for romantic expression. ~ Elbert Ventura, Rovi
• Wong Kar-wai at his most lyrical and mannered, Happy Together is a voluptuously photographed meditation on love and loneliness. Employing the same off-the-cuff direction and dazzling visual style of his landmark Chungking Express (thanks to ace cinematographer Christopher Doyle), Wong gives Happy Together a similarly loose structure, though it is a darker, more melancholy film. Like characters in a Samuel Beckett play, the Hong Kongese gay couple stranded far from their native land and at the end of their rope recognizes the destructive, ultimately doomed nature of their relationship, but they cannot quite bring themselves to break their bonds. Happy Together gained notoriety for its frank portrayal of homosexuality, resulting in its getting banned in Singapore, among other places. Though this long taboo subject was slowly being broached by such art house directors as Tsai Ming-liang and Stanley Kwan, few films dealt with Chinese male sexuality as directly (and as graphically) as Wong did here. Both male leads, Leslie Cheung and the sad-eyed Tony Leung Chiu Wai, give brilliant, fearless performances. Happy Together is an utterly romantic, deeply moving film that continues to haunt the viewer long after the credits have rolled. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi